Brown doesn’t believe in choice, at least when it comes to coffee

19 April 2008, 12:00am

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“When Gordon Brown used to hold meetings at the Treasury, coffee would be served with the milk already added. I always thought that summed up his style. Such was his eagerness to get on to business that he had no time for the 20 seconds it would take to pass round the jug and the biscuits, a ritual that broke the ice across the rest of Whitehall.”

This is how Tom Clark, a former special adviser who is now a leader writer at The Guardian, starts his superb piece on Gordon Brown. The whole thing is well worth reading—it is not a screed but a measured appraisal of Brown’s strengths and weaknesses.